1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printer and a power controlling method for the printer, and more particularly to a printer capable of reducing power consumed while the printer is not used, and a power controlling method for the printer.
2. Related Art
A printer is an image formation device which receives data from a host computer and then forms a corresponding image onto a recordable medium such as a sheet of paper.
In a laser printer, print data are received from external equipment such as a host computer to develop the print data into printable image data. The developed image data are stored in a print image buffer. Then a laser beam, corresponding to image data of one raster read out from the print image buffer, is emitted from a laser diode to perform a main scanning operation, thereby forming an electrostatic latent image on a photosensitive drum for every dot line. Thereafter, toner is attached to the electrostatic latent image on the photosensitive drum and then transferred onto a recordable medium such as a sheet of paper. The toner on the recordable medium is heated by a fixing heater of a fixing device to fix the toner on the recordable medium, thereby completing a print process.
Laser printers are also referred to as electrophotographic printers. The host computer can be a desktop computer, a personal computer, a portable computer such as a notebook computer or palm-sized computer, or other type of computer.
I have found that power can be consumed unnecessarily by a printer when the printer is not being used.